Contemporary healthcare relies heavily on implantable medical devices (IMDs) to help patients lead normal and healthy lives. For example, IMDs such as pacemakers, implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs), cardiac re-synchronization therapy (CRT) devices, drug delivery systems, and neurostimulators can help manage a broad range of ailments, such as cardiac arrhythmia, diabetes, and Parkinson's disease. Modern IMDs are entrusted with vital tasks in terms of medical care; delivering insulin or painkillers at proper rates, measuring and collecting data on the vital signs and passing the data on to doctors and nurses, and direct stimulation of a critical function of an organ, as is the case with pacemakers, ICDs, CRTs, and neurostimulators.
There is a business desire to use commercially available telemetry protocols to more easily facilitate widespread provisioning of telemetry solutions. When enabling telemetry with an IMD using commercially available telemetry protocols, security is of the utmost importance to maintain a patient's privacy and to prevent any unauthorized or inadvertent programming of the IMD. Accordingly, there is a desire for one or more approaches of restricting and/or policing telemetry communication with an IMD.